3 Months

Due to an overwhelming demand (ok only 2 people mentioned it) for me to keep up with my blog postings, I am going to do my best to write more often. Most unfortunately for everyone else, I may not have much to write about. There - you are at least forewarned.

Well, I'm headed into my fourth month of living here. Crazy how the time just keeps on going by so fast. Like anything else, some moments seem forever, and some just fly by. I'll try to do my best to recap the good stuff for you.

I got to go to Beijing over National Holiday weekend. It was a really fun experience, though probably a little marred in its authenticity due to our overwhelming need to find all things western the moment we leave Kunming. (We were thrilled to eat at Outback Steakhouse, hunted down a Starbucks, and ordered 3 full meals at a Mexican restaurant.) It was a crazy crush of people, since everyone in the country has a holiday (or so it seems) during that week. We did the obvious touristy things, since we only had about 4 days to take it all in. We saw temples, and the Forbidden City, and the Spring Palace, and Tiananmen Square, and gardens. But my favorite - hands down - was the Great Wall. To be honest, I really hadn't given seeing any of these things a whole lot of thought. But hiking there, up the Great Wall, was absolutely indescribable. I imagine it felt much like how some people feel when they see the Grand Canyon for the first time. (I don't remember how I felt about that...) It was just this amazingly scenic, enormous wall... which doesn't really sound all that great, I guess. I think the most amazing part to me, is that in pictures it just looks like a wall. But when you're walking along it, you realize that you're actually hiking up and down mountains. They built this crazy thing over the tops of mountains. Anyway, it was spectacular. And killer to hike. Tiffany and I hiked for four hours, and were absolutely done by the end of it. We got to zip line down (together, because they said that if we went down one at a time, we would go too slowly) to the bottom of the mountain, where our tour busses picked us up. (Thank goodness - if they had said that we had to walk back, I would still be up there.) It wasn't all fun though - apparently we hiked the Wall during stink bug nesting season. There were complete swarms of these bugs, and they had no problem landing where ever. My traveling advice: take bug repellent.

Life since then has been less than exciting. A week or two after our break, we had a little lice outbreak at our school. Unfortunately, most of the lice seemed to be residing in the hair of fourth graders. Although I felt itchy for a week, I never actually had lice. We had to check everyone's head every morning until the epidemic was over. The first day, the day we discovered that everyone had it, we ended up sending the majority of our students home before lunch time. Which actually made a fun school day for everyone, although we got nothing real accomplished! But if I never see a nit again in my life, it will be far too soon. (Luckily, I never actually saw any bugs - just the little white nits. Still, it's gross.)

Mostly, I'm just functioning as a first year teacher - lesson plan, grade, teach, repeat. Mostly not exciting, but I'm so glad to have Sarah, the teacher of the other 4th grade. She shares everything with me, and keeps me on top of things. I would be far worse off without her. (Or at least at school late every night.) I do have a fun little teacher story for you - as long as you never tell my boss or any other potential employers. One day during math class last week, the students were seemingly all checked out. I was trying to get them to hurry up and check the answers for an activity we just did so that we could move on to something else. But no one was paying attention, so we kept having to go back over everything. I was getting frustrated, and said under my breath (sort of), "This is just ridiculous." Well, this cute little ELL (English Language Learner) boy sits up at the front - and apparently he was the one student paying attention, because I heard him repeat under his breath, "Ridiculous," like he was trying to figure out what it meant. It made me laugh, and so I wasn't frustrated any more, but just collected all their papers and we moved right along into the next thing. That's the great thing about the students I have this year - they always seem to redeem themselves right when I'm about done. They are - by far - my favorite part of my job.

I'm enjoying learning Chinese, although I'm doing it at a snail's pace. We finally finished learning pronunciation last week, and started learning basic sentences. It's great to finally be able to say things. But pretty much all I can say is "I am a teacher," "I want a pen", etc. I can't actually speak to anyone in Chinese. The other people in my Chinese class are fun, and we laugh at each other's mistakes. Last class we learned to say "I am an American." Then for about 5 minutes after that, a woman in my class tried to tell the teacher that she was from England, because she kept mixing up the words for the nationalities. My teacher kept telling her (in Chinese) that she was not English, but was American. And the poor woman just kept saying back to her, in Chinese, "Right, I am English." We laughed at her mercilessly, then finally told her what she was saying wrong. Anyway, even though I can't speak any Chinese yet, I am finding that I'm able to understand more. Chinese people seem to be extraordinarily patient with us non-Chinese speakers, and more and more I'm able to understand (through excessive hand motions) what people are saying to me - or at least the overall gist of it. Although I definitely bought something at the store today, and when the clerk asked me for smaller change, I said "I don't want it" instead of "I don't have it." She didn't even really look at me strange... I think sometimes they just expect it. Anyway, we Americans could take a lesson from their kindness to foreigners, generally.

It's still frustrating to not be able to do practically anything on my own. And I still miss everyone back home terribly. But I'm learning to like some things here, and not just for their novelty. I really do like riding my bike to work every morning (except when it rains - I hate it when it rains). I like that it wakes me up as much as a cup of coffee. I like it when the old men sing aloud on their bikes, or the young men sing along to their MP3 players on their mopeds. I love that I can buy fresh fruits and veggies for pennies every day of the week. I like the unhurried, nonchalant way that people seem to live their lives here... although I'm not entirely sure that that's not just the way that it seems. I like my students and the people that I work with. Mostly, I still know how lucky (for lack of a better word) I am to be here, and am so thankful to be. I like that I feel useful, that maybe my being here can mean something worthwhile to someone else. But with all the holidays coming quickly, part of me selfishly wishes I could have it both ways. If only I can keep my eyes on what really matters, then I know it will all be just fine.